yes, the burner came preinstalled in my dell computer. should i disregard arniebear's comments, then?
i would have no idea how to do any of this. i'm a newbie! i think it may be time to call in the geek squad or something.
one more post -- i'm just trying to give you as much info as i can -- my recorder won't recognize or erase DVD+RW's at all anymore. they worked when i first got my computer, but now the drive seemingly doesn't even know they're there. just some info that might help.
To Dametony Try another recorder in your system, if another recorder works then its yours thats bad or try your recorder in someone elses computer. I use nero but only for burning music CDS and data, i find it very good and easy to use. I also find that alot of software you don't need to play with to much to get your results. Maybe you changed a setting that was for something else and you need to uninstall and reinstall. I also said for making my DVD movies that i use a program called InterVideo WInDVD Creator. It converts your movies for you into AVI or another format if you like. It will burn them onto your dvd disc or hard drive and the nice thing about it is if it won't work because of a flaw in your movie it won't burn anything onto your DVD and waste one on you. It will join clips together so it will be one movie but you also have the choice of selecting chapters after you put the DVD in your player. You can customize your labels almost anyway you want. I have had problems in the past but i find with some imagination i solve most problems easily enough. Rae http://www.intervideo.com/jsp/WinDVDCreator_Download.jsp
I've been thru this the thread, plus the latest replies about firmware etc, and have the following to offer --> I know there's still a question as to whether or not the correct firmware has been applied, and that might explain why dvdinfopro can't properly report on the disc. Here's what you posted earlier - snippet from 'Nice List of DVD Media and Codes' (list is not complete or up to date but it's a very good reference) - http://forums.afterdawn.com/thread_view.cfm/155431 - Going from these 2 lines from your dvdinfopro output - - your media 'may' be one of these - - CMC are the absolute pits when it comes to DVD manufacturer's, whereas MCC are top quality manufacturers. MCC (Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation) is the parent company of MKM (Mitsubishi Kagaku Media), which in turn is the parent company of Verbatim. - However i don't know if we can trust dvdinfopro's output here purely because of the possibility of incorrect firmware being in place. dvdinfopro output from one of my Verbatim 8x DVD-R that's been written to - Media Information Disc Regions are 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 Media code/Manufacturer ID MCC 02RG20 Format Type UDF 1.02 Volume Name New Application id Implementation id AHEAD Nero Recording Date/Time (mm/dd/yyyy) 6/ 7/2005 19:22:16 Format Capacity 3.43GB(3.68GB) Book Type DVD-R Media Type DVD-R Manufacturer Rated Speed 8.0x 11080KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 8.0x 11080KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 6.0x 8310KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 4.0x 5540KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 2.0x 2770KBps Write Strategy Speed 4.0x 5540KBps 2x Speed OPC beta 09 2x Speed OPC power 0D 2x Write Strategy field 1 13 87 78 80 2x Write Strategy field 2 88 80 00 00 00 00 4x Speed OPC beta 05 4x Speed OPC power 15 4x Write Strategy field 1 0D 10 0B 0A 4x Write Strategy field 2 98 08 0F 0B 4x Write Strategy field 3 80 00 00 00 4x Speed OPC beta multi-pulse 07 4x Speed OPC power multi-pulse 19 4x Write Strategy field 4 15 A7 88 75 4x Write Strategy field 5 99 BC AA A2 20 22 4x Write Strategy field 6 00 00 D0 00 00 Data area starting sector 30000h Data area end sector 1B6E0Fh Linear Density 0.267um/bit Track Density 0.74um/track Number of Layers 1 Complete Media Code 00000000 00 6C 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 85 0D 10 .l...@....R..... 00000010 88 9A 80 00 03 4D 43 43 20 30 32 00 04 52 47 32 .....MCC 02..RG2 00000020 30 20 20 00 05 88 80 00 00 00 02 00 06 09 0D 13 0 ............. dvdinfopro output from one of my Verbatim 8x DVD-R that hasn't been written to - Media Information Region information N/A not a DVD-VIDEO Media code/Manufacturer ID MCC 02RG20 Format Capacity Blank Disc Free Blocks 411107328 Free Capacity 4.38GB(4.71GB) Book Type DVD-R Media Type DVD-R Manufacturer Rated Speed 8.0x 11080KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 8.0x 11080KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 6.0x 8310KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 4.0x 5540KBps Available Write Descriptor CLV 2.0x 2770KBps Write Strategy Speed 4.0x 5540KBps 2x Speed OPC beta 09 2x Speed OPC power 0D 2x Write Strategy field 1 13 87 78 80 2x Write Strategy field 2 88 80 00 00 00 00 4x Speed OPC beta 05 4x Speed OPC power 15 4x Write Strategy field 1 0D 10 0B 0A 4x Write Strategy field 2 98 08 0F 0B 4x Write Strategy field 3 80 00 00 00 4x Speed OPC beta multi-pulse 07 4x Speed OPC power multi-pulse 19 4x Write Strategy field 4 15 A7 88 75 4x Write Strategy field 5 99 BC AA A2 20 22 4x Write Strategy field 6 00 00 D0 00 00 Data area starting sector 30000h Linear Density 0.267um/bit Track Density 0.74um/track Number of Layers 1 Complete Media Code 00000000 00 6C 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 85 0D 10 .l...@....R..... 00000010 88 9A 80 00 03 4D 43 43 20 30 32 00 04 52 47 32 .....MCC 02..RG2 00000020 30 20 20 00 05 88 80 00 00 00 02 00 06 09 0D 13 0 ............. The media code for my discs is MCC02RG20 as seen above. This is where we can't yet make progress as your drive can't get this far. It could be that your drive has indeed got incorrect firmware. Firmware is what 'teaches' a drive about makes of media, burn speeds, how to interpret media etc etc, and your drive is just not recognising that media.
After further research into the firmware and translating a page from a german forum it appears that 10GE is correct firmware for this RPC2 OEM drive. http://translate.google.com/transla...h?q=nec+10ge&start=10&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&sa=N and it is about a year old, and the only update is hacked, a try at your own risk. Firmware introduces your drive to new disks, if your drive recognizes the media you can write. To quote Scuba Pete From Cynthia_ at Digital Digest As Neph states try your burner in another PC and see if you have the same problems.
Just so there's no confusion, arniebear and myself aren't contradicting each other btw, i am just working from what the dvdinfopro output states. The bottom line is the drive just isn't reporting on the media correctly, whether it's right firmware, wrong firmware, old firmware. An observation (just in case it helps, probably doesn't). The very first post states the drive to be a 1000A. I had a look here - http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread.php?t=65839 where it states a brief difference between the 1000A and the 1100A - 1000A = 2.4 DVD+R, 2.4 DVD+RW 1100A = 4 DVD+R, 2.4 DVD+RW From looking here - http://herrie.org/upgrdr.html the 1000A can be morphed into a 1100A or a 1300A, but it's a 50% success rate for either (i interpret the success rate to mean 50% success rate of burning to media at the newer speeds of the 1100A firmware, not 50% chance of the firmware upgrade itself working) . Lacking any mention of 4x writing throughout the thread, or what speed media was used there's only so much i can work out here. Now i've gone thru the entire thread a couple more times and even though arniebear's link for the year old firmware only mentions an 1100A and not a 1000A that doesn't mean Dell didn't OEM a 1000A drive. Even so, it would appear that whether or not this drive was originally a 1000A or an 1100A is moot. I feel we need more info re the media. Anyone concur or not so far ?
It is media related in the effect that this drive has no up to date firmware and cannot recognize newer media. This is from the Dell site As you can see this firmware is almost two years old, in that time media has changed, and this drive is not keeping up so you will get a hit/miss on burning. I also agree that there is no mention of 4x writing, my NEC 1300a writes DVD's at 4x but does not like to write at 2.4x on DVD media, it will however do this on DVD-RW fine.
@arniebear - There doesn't seem to be any massive and guaranteed benefit from the drive being morphed into a 1300A, from your own experience with the 1300A and/or the info on the herrie page i quoted.. so...that would appear to wrap it up then ?
as entertaining as that was I think it's time for a guide on how to post but that would probably only be helpful to those that need another line in they're sig. because it seems as if none feads them anyways. may be they should give a test before allowing people in. but then you would have never been able to read this informative post just thought this was a good place to talk about everything off topic
update: i'm currently able to burn discs in nero. it tells me that the burn failed every time, but the discs play just fine in my standalone. conversely, i can burn a dvd in recordnow!, and it will tell me that the burn was successful, but when i try to play it in my standalone, it won't work. i got on the chat line with a dell rep last night, and they had me do some stuff, and they told me that it looks like my burner is shot. and judging by the symptoms that cynthia at digital digest talks about, it sounds like it to me. this was my assumption from the start. i am sure it's not a media issue at all because: 1)i've tried other media 2)computer won't read or erase the very same DVD+RW's that it could read before 3)problems burning CD-to-CDR exact copies 4)the current spindle was working fine until recently 5)i used verbatims when my sonic recordnow! went down, and then when i installed nero, the discs worked fine again, so it was the software, somehow 6)the discs are burning in nero even though nero says they're not if i'm wrong on any of these assumptions, tell me, but i'm pretty sure i'm going to try a disc cleaner/compressed air approach and then, finally, have the geek squad come and take a look, maybe switch out my burner for another.
I'd say you had the symptoms of a sick or dying burner. My NEC is 1300a which is a step up from yours because it burns both +/- R's. NEC has two lasers in the drive one that burns CD's and one for DVD's. One laser can go but the other can still be functioning. The lack of any kind of update for this burner is also not helpful. There is a total lack of communication between drive and software. My NEC is still being supported so I have not been having a problem, but I was for awhile with certain disks, especially Sony the drive was burning sporadically on disks from the same spindle, until my mfr put up the newer firmware. I just bought a new Plextor as a replacement for the NEC because after almost two years I know it is just a matter of time before it starts showing signs of old age. You can still try swapping the drive out to another computer and see how it does, or start looking for another.
@creaky - arniebear - Mort81 - et al This was a damn fine entertaining (frustrating for some)thread. My son recently through some of the same symptons with his burner. Dell would not replace it because it was 2 days (that's right) out of warranty. They told him it was because they do not support any burning software other than Roxio. Told them he wasn't using Roxio and the burner simply quit burning. Bought him the NEC3520A from New Egg for $46. Dell can kiss my rosy, red @ss. Anyway, you guys have a lot more patience(sp?) than me. Tsquare43
@tsquare43 When I purchased my Dell I specifically did not have a DVD burner put in, because you do not know what you will get. Better to buy the drive yourself, and do your own setup. Less of a hassle and you will get a whole lot better burner. The only call I made to Dell ended up with me reformating with little help from their service dept. So I to stay away from Dell. My two cents :~)
@tsquare43 - cheers for the comments. I took a couple days off posting after this one but i don't give up easily @Arniebear and Mort81 cheers for sticking with it, at least a conclusion of sorts was reached.
To all who added to this thread I say thanks too. I know that what we tried to contribute may not have been exactly what the poster wanted to hear, but everything posted was good information and hopefully some others will read it and get some incite. I know people always say it is not my media, but what media is being used at is usually the key to everything. If your drive is not reading/writing media correctly then your burner has a problem i.e. poor media, bad firmware, bad power, no dma, bad burner. My two cents :~)
I am having a similar problem, except that my power calibration error comes at the start of burning, not at the end. The only added info I can offer, is that my troubles seem to start when I use media (DVD+R) that is rated 'faster' than my drive. In other words, 2X and 4X media works pretty much flawlessly, but if I try to use 8X or 16X I almost invariably get the power calibration error. The 8X media I've been unsuccessfully using is Sony DVD+R and TDK DVD+R both are rated 8X. The 4X media working flawlessly is Sony DVD+R and Maxell DVD+R both 4X. It is Dell OEM and the firmware is 10GE (the latest accoding to Dell). Do you think forcing 1A3 would help?
I know nobody wants to see this especially in this thread but I would ID those TDK's and make sure they aren't junk cmc mag. Here's a couple codes for TDK 8x dvd+r's. The sony's should be ok. TDK DVD+R 8x (CMC MAG.E01) TDK DVD+R 8x (RICOHJPN R02)
We should all get together and file a class action law suit against CMC Mag. That would clear up so many problems for so many people.
